The Obama administration has picked seven people to serve on a financial control board overseeing the restructuring of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico’s $70 billion debt burden and $43 billion unfunded pension liability. Under congressional legislation signed after the island

A ruling by the California Appeals Court could terminate public employee unions’ claims that public pension spiking creates a legal contract under the “California Rule.” The ruling could overturn up to $250 billion of pension spiking.

With a Congressionally appointed federal control board about to take over Puerto Rico’s finances, the U.S. territory just admitted that its massively spiked public pension plan owes another $43 billion.

The CalPERS Board voted to refuse California Gov. Jerry Brown’s modest demand to decrease their expected pension investment returns by a tiny 0.2% year, because the impact would have increased pension contribution costs by about $1.2 billion across nearly 800,000 employees–about $125 per month, on average.

The California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS) has announced that its solvency has improved and that it is only $89.7 billion underfunded. Unfortunately, CalPERS’s purported solvency of percentage of 77% assumes the fantasy that it can conservatively compound its annual earnings at 7.5% without any losses. But if CalPERS only earns 4.5% a year–a rate conservative private pensions often shoot for–the fund’s long-term liability is a staggering $290 billion.